I want to run three monitor on my system so was looking at running a SLI board, but since so little is supported by the drivers (ie 3D Studio Max, MAYA which i use the most) would it be possible to run for example: 1 x 6800GT and 1 x other cheaper card in the second slot would i still be able to run my three monitors but allowing the 6800GT to do most of the work as SLI is not supported? Or is there another suggestion on choice of graphics card?
Yea that should work fine iirc... Sure there was a test somewhere with an Nvidia card and an ATI one runinng in single mode on an SLI board Should allow 4 monitors to be used...
Uh.. i dunno. I dont think (although never used an SLI board yet) the 2nd slot is activated until you flip the pcb to SLI, then instead of 16x0 it's 8x8. But i dunno if enabling the 8x8 it is required that you are using SLI with 2 identical cards + sli bridge!?
IIRC (sure someone will clarify the situation) you set to SLI mode (8*8) but dont use the bridge chip, and the cards work individually...
It's 16+1 or 8+8 I believe. However you could have 8+8 and not set SLI mode in the BIOS or windows. I've heard (I hope it's wrong though) that having cards in SLI (enabled and everything, not just two cards in two slots) only lets you use one monitor, but as it's for gaming you only need one monitor anyways. The card only physically relocates the PCIE lanes, there are BIOS and Windows setting that actually force the cards to work in tandem. AFAIK anywas, if someone wants to send me a second PCIE card I'd be happy to test (I'll send it back) to confirm it. So to answer your question, you should be able to do just that.
Fair enough, i didnt know if the BIOS required it specifically to have the bridge chip etc for 2 cards to work.
